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Sunday, February 5, 2012

Butler family breakthrough...brick wall begets brick wall

I love when genealogy brick walls tumble down. But it seems that in my research once the wall falls another one is hiding just on the other side. This is the case with William Moulton Butler, Jr. and his parentage. I first delved in to this brick wall here. The gist is that William Moulton Butler, Jr. states in all documentation that his mother is Eliza Johnston Butler and that he was born in 1863. His father, William M. Butler, Sr., was married twice, the first time to Celia Temperance Bliss, the second time to Eliza. Yet, the dates that many books, and subsequent research, give for the birth dates William Sr.'s children do not jive with the story he and Eliza spun in later life. In fact, the last known child he had with Celia and the first "believed" child with Eliza are only three months apart in age. Fishy, to be sure.

The individuals involved are better known as William M. Butler, Sr. versus his sister, Altieri Huestis. I am not a lawyer, so the discussion of the actual case is a bit over my head, but the gist is that William had put some land in to a trust for Celia's use. She then died and funky phrasing in her will left her intentions for the land questionable. Why William is fighting with his sister over land is beyond me at this point. But this post isn't about William's legal issues. Further in the opinion I find:

Sah-weet, a year for Celia's death. Not only that, but she clearly had a will. Now I had a death year. So I strolled back over to my best friend Google and searched for "Celia T. Butler 1865." Lucky me, a hit comes up at Ancestry.com that leads me to Chicago Marriage and Death Index, compiled by Sam Fink. This is a database of marriage and death mentions in local Chicago newspapers, that was added to Ancestry.com in late 2011.

And there is Celia. The codes in the third column indicate which newspapers the announcement was listed in. Chicagogenealogy.com has a great post on this wonderful resource. Celia's death announcement was found in the Chicago Times and the Chicago Tribune. I was not able to find the Chicago Times version, but did locate her death announcement in Tribune on Fold3.com.

After a year of looking, I finally found it. But what does this mean to my research? Celia Butler, William's first wife, was still alive when the first three children attributed to his second wife were born. So did they have some type of understanding? "I'll set you up with land if you'll move to the suburbs, live with your family and pretend like I'm not having babies with another woman?" This wouldn't really matter to me if my second great-grandfather were not one of the children in question. Like I said: Brick wall begets brick wall begets brick wall.